Local economic development and the academy

This brief introduction highlights the various ways the Academy approaches local economic development (LED). It shows that the Academy is not always been favorable to the advancement of LED as its practical demands often transcend the tightly defined disciplines of a typical university structure. Caught between disciplines, LED to often neglected by theorists as the subject matter is difficult to model and depends heavily on the social fabric of the regional economy. The paper concludes with a brief outline of this special issue. The papers in this volume show the diversity of approaches and topics that characterize the practice of LED. They are multidisciplinary and depict a variety of approaches from the more theoretical to the applied.